The Tale of Three Princesses

What changes to the world can be brought if you let one teen and two infants survive the diseases that killed them in 1650ies? At first, the ripples from those stones thrown into the water grow slowly, but in as soon as 30 years they will morph the world into something that is unlike what we remember from what we call our history… So, the butterfly flaps its wings, and we see…

Isle of Wight, July 1, 1650.
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She was growing incredibly sad this summer. A princess. A daughter. A witness. Elisabeth Stuart, a daughter of Martyr King, who was present alongside her brother the Duke of Gloucester at the execution of their Royal father. Removed from the care of the kind Countess of Leicester, the girl was kept there, on this island, with its winds and bad weather, as hostage, despite the pressure from the Dutch government and her brother-in-law, who petitioned to let the young princess to move into the care of her sister, Mary, Princess of Orange.

A courier from London has just arrived. With news. Good news. A princess was allowed to join her Dutch relatives, after lots of debates in Parliament, no doubt heated by the threats of war from the Dutch. Mary, now pregnant with her husband’s first child, cleverly pulled the strings into manipulating her husband. A few lines from the Gospel of Matthew to calm down rabidly beating heart… a few lines into the diary… and the preparations to meet the Dutch ship which will deliver her to her big sister. A deliverance indeed.

She will live, she will carry the memories of her father’s last moment in her heart. And while the Elisabeth’s head will not wear the Royal Crown, the same cannot be said of her descendants…

Warsaw, August 2, 1650
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The capital of Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth erupted into celebrations. Celebrations dedicated to the christening of the first child of king Jan II Kaziemirz and his Gonzaga Queen, Ludwika Maria. The girl received the grandiose name Maria Anna Theresa, and her godparents were Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor (for whom Prince Karol Ferdynand Vasa stood proxy) and his recently new consort Eleonora Gonzaga (for whom the Princess Theodora Christine Sapieha stood proxy), and Pope Innocent X (represented by Nuncio Giovanni de Torres).

Since her birth, the girl was destined to enter the Carmelite Order, but the fate declared otherwise. While she would be raised among nuns and priests her entire childhood (and this will not dull her wits, inherited from her mother), after the untimely death of her younger brother, Prince Jan Zygmunt, and the failure of her parents to have more kids, she will be destined for another fate. Not the bride of Christ, but the bride of man, who will eventually become the King of Poland… And maybe even crowned as the co-ruler of her husband… From the nun to the Queen… a path of true princess.

Paris, September 2, 1659

The peace was signed and they were allowed to return to Paris. Prince of Conde, now and forever remaining the man who fought the Spaniards, though the court did remember the more recent cases of him fighting with Spaniards, returned with his wife, surprisingly brave Claire Clemence, and his two children – Henri Jules, who grew into awkward teenager, and a little girl whose christening was celebrated today.

Anne Louise Charlotte, Mademoiselle de Bourbon, cried in the hands of her godmother, a British exile, Princess Elisabeth Stuart. Another exile was a godfather of the child, Duke of Gloucester, a friend of Conde, still sad after the death of his young fiancée, Mademoiselle de Dunois, last year. Conde did believe in the restoration of the Stuarts on the British throne, and the prospect of a brother to eventual King de-facto being married to his niece was appealing. Alas, it came to naught. There were great hopes that Anne Louise will not die prematurely like her cousin, whose father Duc de Longuevill was another godfather of young Mademoiselle de Bourbon…

And those hopes did come into reality… While her father was not a King and never was closer than third in line to the throne, she will end up wearing the crown. She will have her obituary written not in French, and said not on the French land, but she will be remembered eventually as a “Good Queen Anne”…
 
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This TL is sorta inspired by "Elisabeth Stuart survives" discussion we had a while ago. I do plan to cover 1650ies in broad strokes, while having the bulk of changes to take part in 1660ies, but there will be some significant changes. For example, I plan on William II to live a little bit longer TTL, till 1654 at least, though I'm not sure of exact consequences of this, but he'll live to see the First Anglo-Dutch War.
The big game change in the East TTL is obvious, and while the French sub-PoD is not as big as the other two, it will have its time to shine. Also, French and British sub-plots will borrow heavily from the "Duchess of Cumberland" TL, though not exactly repeating them.
 
I'll try to post the update tomorrow. Just a plausibility question - with Willem II not contacting his smallpox of doom due to being elsewhere at the moment (the first major ripple of TL), will the First Anglo-Dutch war go roughly as OTL? I think so, since the clusterf*ck of Admiralties will not go anywhere.
 
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